Swan Song (2021)
Directed by Benjamin Cleary
In the near future, Cameron Turner is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Presented with an experimental solution to shield his wife and son from grief, he grapples with altering their fate in this thought-provoking exploration of love, loss, and sacrifice.
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4 films that influenced Swan Song
What critics say influenced Swan Song
Like a more realistic, grounded take on “The 6th Day” or “Criminal” (and, to a lesser extent, “Total Recall,” “Gemini Man,” and even “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”), “Swan Song” focuses more on the drama and cognitive concerns of cloning and brain-duplication (conscious and subconscious mirroring) than action, adventure, and the out-of-this-world nature of the science-fiction components.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Swan Song has the understated, contemplative sci-fi of stuff like Her , Ex Machina , Morgan and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind .
If Cleary’s prologue evokes memories of the meet-cute from “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” in the process, that also proves to accurately foreshadow a movie that uses a fanciful procedure as scaffolding for a story about someone trying to pave over their deepest pain.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Swan Song has the understated, contemplative sci-fi of stuff like Her , Ex Machina , Morgan and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind .
These titbits are gleaned from Benjamin Cleary’s tear-jerking first feature Swan Song, which occupies the same field of touchy-feely speculation as Spike Jonze’s 2013 man-and-machine romance Her.
Spike Jonze’s Her and Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime are superior examples; this year has seen two fine entries in Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man and Kogonada’s After Yang .
Think Her, but anthropocentric, with Black people, and even more earnest.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Swan Song has the understated, contemplative sci-fi of stuff like Her , Ex Machina , Morgan and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind .
Like most of the speculative sci-fi movies that hinge on such existential dilemmas (the more intense “Ex Machina” comes to mind), “Swan Song” is frequently held hostage by its own concept.
That’s my chief takeaway from Swan Song , director Benjamin Cleary’s first feature after winning an Oscar for his short film Stutterer .
Cleary makes his feature writing and directing debut after a number of shorts, including the Oscar-winning “Stutterer.”